HAPs communication in Saudi Arabia under dusty weather conditions

Abstract

Technology is improving rapidly. One of the most revolutionary communication technologies that appears to be convincing and efficient is called High Altitude Platform (HAP). As any other wireless communication system, a main degrading factor of HAP Station (HAPS) propagation channel in desert and semi-desert areas is the dust storm attenuation. This attenuation increases with an increasing operational frequency and is prominent in the frequency bands above 10 GHz which is used for HAPS communications. This paper investigates the effect of dust attenuation on the reliability of the HAPs system. Also, based on a close scrutiny of the existing dust attenuation models, this paper proposes some modifications to an existing dust attenuation model to comply with the real dust phenomenon. In this paper, a platform altitude of 22 km with a minimum elevation angle of 20 were considered. The analysis showed that the dust attenuation degraded the signal to noise ratio by around 20 dB at Ka frequency band. As a result, an appropriate intelligent attenuation mitigation technique was then suggested.